The Man Who Brought a :-) to Your Screen

The year was 1982, and Scott Fahlman had grown tired of geeky scientists who never got the joke. A member of a vanguard group of computer experts involved in the earliest online newsgroups, the Carnegie Mellon University researcher participated in e-discussions on topics as diverse as abortion and campus parking. Many in the newsgroup, he found, had caustic senses of humor, but without the benefit of facial expressions or vocal cues to indicate irony, their sarcasm was sometimes mistaken for spite.

So he proposed in a newsgroup that posters use a digital smiley face, :-), and a virtual frown, :-(, to clarify the tone of their messages. Fahlman was pleasantly surprised when participants began to use his "smiley" icons to denote emotive tenor.